Coach Jeff's Soccer Training
My Soccer History
I played soccer from kindergarten until Senior year in high school. I will be 53 years old in April, so my main soccer playing years took place starting around 1977 and went through 1989. By 5th grade, I was playing both Fall and Spring seasons each year and by 7th grade I played on a few "select" (club) teams and competed in several traveling tournaments, as well as played at least 1, and sometimes 2 indoor soccer seasons per year (soccer almost year round). I played on the C team my freshman year in high school (Bishop MIegwhich was a 5-A Kansas school, with 6-A being the largest group of high schools in the state), but I moved up to JV my sophomore year and Varsity my Junior and Senior years. I may be a bit old and out-of-shape these days, compared with my peak soccer years, but I still gots the skillz! 😊 And I can show your player what I know, and do it quickly, if they are committed to staying focused at these practices and view the drills as opportunities to push their abilities.
First season: 1977
(6-years-old - Kindergarten)
Tournament in Pike's Peak,CO: Summer of 1988
(before my Senior year)
Recent Coaching Experience
Charity 5v5 Tournament
Back in late May of 2023, I coached a group of 8 girls from last year’s KC Blaze Stars team in a 5v5 charity tournament at the Central Bank (Sporting KC) fields. This was outside of any association with KC Blaze (several parents decided to pull together a team). In preparation for this tournament, I put on three 2-hour practices with the 8 girls on the team and put together drills that I felt taught the girls better basic fundamental foot skills. I found it very rewarding to teach the girls what I know, and to see them use these skills in the games. And the fact that it was super-hot out at these practices, but none of the girls seemed to complain about anything, and they all were happy to stay out there the full 2 hours, was a sign that I was doing something right!
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With the help of my wife, Amie and Suzanne Bryant, Bridget, and Andy Williams, we tie-dyed our own uniforms shirts and socks, and I put together a logo for our voted-on team name, The Tie-Dyed Titans, and we ironed the logo on the front and personalized numbers/names on the back.
Our referee, checking for metal-spiked cleats, and making sure no players are wearing any jewelry.
In the end, we won 2, tied 1 and lost 1. But we dominated the league in excellent memories! :o)
Staley Summer Camp After-Sessions
About a month after the 5v5 team, I spent 3 days a week, for the 4 weeks of July, from 9:00am to 10:30am (sometimes 11am) coaching several of the girls from the Blaze team after their Staley H.S. agility camp, which ran from 8:00 to 9:00am. Each day I would take Macy to the Staley camp and sit in a chair and watch her. This is when I started collecting my massive assortment of soccer training videos on my phone. After the first day of the Staley session ended, we decided to stay and kick the ball around for another hour. We found that almost everyone who was at the morning session camp (a couple hundred kids) would leave and we had the whole beautiful Staley Soccer stadium field all to ourselves, most of the time!!! After that first day, I sent out an email to the parents of the other players we knew that went to that camp, and I invited them to stay and practice with us. I also bought a 50-pack of cones on Amazon and a set of pop-up goals. For the first few days it was just Macy and a few extra girls. But by the end of the Summer, we had 6 to 8 girls attending! During this time was when I started developing drills to work on foot skill fundamentals that helped the girls know how to get around defenders in 1v1 situations. In addition, I went through all the 100+ videos that I had been collecting and started studying them. In order to help me understand what all I had, I would organize the clips into folders of similar moves/skills. As a result of this process, I began to analyze the moves and develop a wholistic understanding of all the independent foot skills that need to be practiced, and the "jook" moves that can be learned as a result of those skills!